Pickets Seek Open Adoption Records

• Activists call attention to a movie about the reunion of an adopted woman with her natural mother.

MONTCLAIR -The screening of an acclaimed movie served as the backdrop for protests against sealed adoption. records here and around the country yesterday.

Outside the Roberts Wellmont Theater, which wah showing "Secrets and Lies" a British movie about the reunion of a young woman with her biological mother, about 25 adoption activists distributed fliers to moviegoers yesterday before going inside to watch the movie themselves.

Similar protests were held in New York City, California and Washington.

Organizers said they chose to hold a "positive picket" at the film because "Secrets and Lies' depicts an adult adoptee gaining easy access to her birth records. Although such access is a reality in England and many other countries, American birth records are closed in every state except Kansas and Alaska, a fact organizers maintain is often glossed over in films and television dramas.

"We're trying to educate people to realize that adults are being prevented from equal access to their past and their medical history" said picketer Kathleen Marangos, a Red Bank lawyer and coordinator for Attorneys for Open Records, a statewide group.

"I think the picket had a very positive impact because we were able to explain to people that in New Jersey adult adoptees can get their adooption records only with a judge's permission and for a good cause," Marangis said. "It is a very expensive process."

Yesterday's events were coordinated across the nation by Bastard Nation, a San Francisco-based support organization for adopted adults.

"A lot of people are simply unaware that the records are sealed," Damsel Plum, public relations director for the group, said.

Jane Nast, of Morristown, legislatiion director for the American Adoption Congress, said proponents of open records had redoubled their efforts in light of a federal case in Tennessee and a proposed New Jersey bill.

The New Jersey bill, which is in the Assembly Appropriations Committee, would allow adoptees to obtain a copy of their original birth certificate at age 18.

Nast said such a law would be only a beginning.

"It starts to open the door," she said, explaining that birth certificates sometimes are wrong, contain limited information about parents and provide no medical information.

It's a definite start, but it's not everything," she said.

Nast and other proponents of open records face strong opposition from adoption agencies, adoption lawyers and some biological parents.

Patrick Purtill, director of governmental relations at the National Council For Adoption, a Washington lobby for adoption agencies, called statutes such as the New Jersey proposal a "big mistake". Purtill said "retroactive" access was an "invastion of privacy".

"For us, the question turns on the matter of consent," Purtill said. "We believe the only person who has a right to divulge information about themselves is that person."

Since parents thought the birth records would be sealed forever, the state is reneging on that contract, he argued.

Proponents of open records, however, said claims of confidentiality are not valid.

"The laws don't compromise confidentiality," Marangos said. "The social worker may have promised a woman confidentiality, but that was from friends and neighbors, not from her child."

But opponents said the assurance of future privacy is a crucial factor for many women who choose adoption over abortion.

Many women who are faced with an unplanned pregnancy are concerned with confidentiality. This essentially removes a choice from a woman in crisis," Purtill said.

Nast said abortion was a red herring used by lobbyists to distort the issue and confuse the public.

Statistics don't "support any correlation. If anything, abortions have gone down when records are unsealed," Nast said.